Saturday, December 4, 2010

Duh DUH DUN! Social Darwinism in Modern Culture

The concept of Social Darwinism was bound to come up eventually and it finally did in talking about Darwin's theory of Sexual Selection. In Darwin's construct males of a species are stronger and have different physical traits than females because of the competition with one another geared toward getting chosen by a female and being able to pass on their genes. (I feel I need an entirely different post to address my reactions to this theory itself and so it shall follow.) Both this idea of sexual selection and the idea of Natural Selection have been twisted into Social Darwinism which attempts to attach these biological theories to societal constructs such as politics, war and poverty. Though Darwin's theories can be seen to be influenced by his Victorian upbringing and Whig affiliations, they were never directly connected to or supposed to be used to explain competition within human culture. This YouTube video perfectly explains the conclusion we have reached after many class discussions and readings: